Dealing With Grief
by nericearren
Summary: Involves flying rodents, travesties of literature, some Stephanie and Damian feels, and roast cat. Random situation. R&R.


As all the best stories start, this one begins at a funeral.

The hill is a large one, dotted with graves adorned with various emblems; all graves of those who have fallen while wearing a mask or tights. Most have their civilian names on them; secret identities don't matter much after death; but the headstone of the grave currently being filled is marked with, not even a fake name, a simple crest.

A bat in flight.

!

Damian wasn't at all put out at the way Dick Grayson was so eager to take over his father's role.

Not at all.

Not one bit.

"Must you prance around like an overgrown flying rodent? Quite frankly, that skintight suit does _not_ leave enough to the imagination, and I already suffer sharing a bathroom with you. I think I might vomit." he made a face to further convey his disgust, as Dick ignored him and continued to make small adjustments to the Batman suit.

Nope.

Not bothered in the least.

Damian toyed with the miniscule screwdriver that he had been using using to pry apart the radio he'd stolen from Barbara Gordon a few days ago and glared at Dick. "You could have waited until my father was cold before you stole his mantle." The words flowed out without any conscious effort on the part of Damian's brain. Dick waved a hand dismissively. "Bruce was cold his whole life, Daymie."

"Do _not_ call me Daymie. And Bruce was _not_ cold. He was . . . professional."

"He was a jackass."

Damian bristled. "How dare you?!" His father was three weeks dead, and already Grayson was disrespecting him. Damian was insulted on the behalf of all the Waynes, whether Dick was-technically-one of them or not.

"Tell me that I'm not saying something we've all thought at one time or another." Dick said, flippantly.

Damian threw the screwdriver at Grayson's head; the costumed young man just barely avoided the tip of the metal becoming lodged in his skull. The tool shattered the mirror. Damian drew himself up, which still, at thirteen, was nothing impressive, and said, "My _father_ was _not_ a jackass. He was a _hero_, and I will not tolerate anyone ruining his memory. Wayne Manor may belong to you, now, but that does not mean that you are Bruce Wayne. You will never be half the man he was." Damian spat, stalking out of the room.

It burned, that Grayson was the chosen son, the eldest, and that Damian's power-little as it was-was tempered by his age. Until he was eighteen, all of his stocks and bonds, his share in Wayne Enterprises, and his fortune, were all tucked away under the safe eye of Dick Grayson, along with Damian himself. He couldn't sneeze without permission from his older brother, as far as Child Services were concerned. So all his high-handed speeches to Dick were nothing but a spoiled brat throwing a tantrum, and that rankled.

As soon as he was eighteen, Damian resolved, he was throwing Grayson out of the Manor; see who was Batman, then.

"Wow. And I thought _Tim_ had father issues."

Damian practically seethed as he spotted the blond girl leaning in a nearby doorway. He was in the hallway leading to his room; unfortunately, her own room was right down the way from his. She rarely stayed there; but it was nevertheless her room.

Stephanie Brown folded her arms and looked down at the boy. "So much anger for one so young." she tutted, suppressing a smile. "We all could hear your little rage quit, you know."

"He was being . . . _infuriating_." Damian gritted out. Stephanie rolled her eyes, shifting into a more comfortable position, as if she expected to be talking to him for a while.

Which wasn't true. He would listen to one more inane comment, and then he was leaving. Somewhere. Anywhere without Stephanie Brown and Dick Grayson.

"He's just grieving."

Unless, of course, she said something that demanded correction.

"He is doing anything _but_ grieving!" Damian growled incredulously. "He is-insulting-my father! Prancing around in his costume like it means nothing! Trying to replace him! Making-making jokes-flippant-light-hearted-uncaring-making _jokes_! He does not care at all, and that makes him unworthy of my father's legacy in and of itself!"

Stephanie pushed off of the door and came to stand in front of Damian, resting her hands on his shoulders. She was smiling; a sad, watery sort of smile, but a smile. The first time someone had dared to smile at him since Bruce's death. "That's how he mourns, D. He's just like you, really; trying to hide how cut up he is. The thing is, he does with jokes what you do with knives, and shutting yourself away with your gadgets. I'm not sure which is worse," she frowned, "but, anyway, it's not because he didn't-doesn't-love Bruce. He just doesn't want anyone to know how much he did."

"That's ridiculous." Damian snapped, but the words had some impact. He, too, wouldn't want people scrutinizing his feelings for his father; so much so that the thought of crying never crossed his mind from the first moment he heard that Bruce Wayne was dead. Dick didn't have superior emotional conditioning; he had no idea how to lock feelings into a special box and forget them, forget pain and sorrow and attachment, use reason to see the higher goal. He had more weighing on his shoulders; people _expected_ him to be Batman.

Deep down, even Damian expected him to be Batman.

He bit his lip, an action that was unusual for him. It happened without planning, sharp teeth digging into the soft skin, and though he had to fight a shudder, the pain focused his mind back to the present. Stephanie was watching him.

"You alright, D?" she asked softly.

Stephanie. If angels existed, they certainly took the form of Stephanie Brown; though she was just as likely a candidate for the Devil incarnate, too. She was always around just when he would have preferred her not to be; she had all kinds of preconceived notions about what he should be and how he should act; she was annoyingly optimistic and nauseatingly affectionate; and she was like a bug he liked to poke with a stick to see what it did next. Her reactions were as varied as the weather in Gotham-she was as likely to punch him as kiss him, and he was often baffled as to the way she thought. He'd all but given up trying to solve the mystery that was her mind, but every now and then, he would find himself dreaming of being inside her head, figuring out her thoughts and conquering her once and for all. If he could just get a clue, then maybe he'd stop feeling so out-of-sorts around her.

"Of course I am." he said briskly, and broke her hold to step around her. "I have just . . . had a long day." The funeral had been only that morning; she still was wearing the same black dress, sans high heels. He himself was suited, having forgotten everything when he walked in to find Dick dressed as Batman, getting ready to go out on nightly patrol. He'd said that he'd reckoned that three weeks without a Batman was more than enough.

Stephanie wouldn't have it. As he tried to pass her, she caught his arm and dragged him into her room, shutting the door behind her. "Wha-" he began, and she slapped a hand over his mouth, _shh_-ing in his ear. He froze. Her arms were around his waist as she leaned against the closed door, and he found his nose level with her collarbone, his hands awkwardly perched on her shoulders.

He'd gotten taller, he thought, impressed.

Footsteps went by on the other side of the door, and after a long, tense moment in the dark, Stephanie shoved Damian away and switched on the light. "Figured you didn't want to talk to Dick just now." she explained. "Sorry for the cloak-and-dagger."

"I'm used to it." Damian said dryly, though his heart was pounding. Try as he might, there were no good ways to slow a racing heart. It was a physical impossibility. The best he could do was train himself to not react to the thudding, and to condition himself against shock, fear, and embarrassment.

Stephanie was looking at him again. After a few seconds' staring contest, she shrugged and starting to undress, throwing her dress, nylons, and underwear all over the room as she swapped one piece of clothing for another. Damian knew that he should be ashamed, but he stared at her as she did so, not quite admiring her smooth, pale skin, and the taught muscles of her body. Maybe she was a little pudgy, he allowed, but he was lying when he mocked her out for being fat. She simply curved in a most satisfying way; if she was truly fat, she wouldn't look half so good in her Batgirl costume.

"_Why_ are you _staring_ at me?!" she demanded, after a while, as she shimmied skin-tight jeans over her bare bottom.

"Just watching your fat butt. Not by choice; it's like the moon. I can't look away." Damian knew he was being mean, now; maybe he wasn't the best at social cues, and telling when someone was joking to hide grief, but he knew that comparing a girl's bottom to the moon was extreme, even for him.

Also very immature.

Stephanie threw a shoe at him. He ducked, and it bounced harmlessly against the wall. She pulled on a t-shirt, forsaking a bra as she dashed after him, snapping that he would be "sorry when I catch you!"

He evaded her effortlessly, and found himself enjoying the chase that ensued. He almost-almost-forgot about Bruce as he danced away from Stephanie's light-blue-painted nails and jabbed, "You could not catch me if you were twenty pounds lighter, old lady!"

"You did _not_ just pull the age card, little britches!"

"You did _not_ just quote a lame children's movie about a totally unnatural relationship between a human boy and a bear!" he matched her speech patterns perfectly.

"You did _not_ just diss Winnie-The-Pooh!" she cried, lunging over a pile of dirty clothes. Her clothes, and old school books, and just about everything else that had entered Stephanie Brown's room in the past four years.

"I was referring to the _Jungle Book_." he snarled, darting just out of reach of her left arm and running partly up the wall to flip over her head, landing neatly on her bed. "A travesty of a facsimile of Rudyard Kipling's so-called classic. Get your childish entertainment straight-you have the mentality for it." he stuck his tongue out at her, and allowed her to finally tackle him.

"You're the kid, here." she panted, both of them flat-out on the bed now. Her arms were still more or less around his waist, her head hovering over his midriff. She puffed out a breath, blowing blond hair out of her face. Her weight on him was not unpleasant, something he tried not to think about lest his own body betray him. He was, after all, still a boy.

"I'm fourteen." he informed her, and she sat up. "Already? Did I miss your birthday?"

"Fortunately, yes." he sat up as well, straightening his suit jacket as best he could. Stephanie sighed. "Oh, how the years go by. I hope Bruce got you something good."

Awkward silence fell.

"Oh, D, I'm so-"

"Don't say you're sorry. All day today, and for the last three weeks, I have had nothing but insufferable imbeciles coming up to me, smothering me with unwanted affections, and telling me how 'sorry' they are that a man that they hardly knew just died." Damian said, his eyes narrowing.

"OK." Stephanie said mildly, and tugged at his coat. "Let's get you changed, then, and go down to the kitchen and have some waffles-"

"What is it with you and waffles?" Damian had to ask.

Stephanie shrugged. "Waffles can fix the whole damn world."

"I could never fathom how a girl so smart placed her faith in such unreliable and foolish things." Damian rolled gracefully off the bed. Steph followed him.

"Think about it for a second." she said, almost wistfully. "You've had the worst day in the history of the world. You're tired, your feet hurt, and you want to bite off the head of whoever talks to you next."

"You're describing every day of my life." They went out into the hallway, walking down to the kitchen.

"Just saying. All this crap happens, you go home, you fix yourself a plate of waffles-or maybe soup, or some roast cat, or whatever it is that you eat-anyway, you start eating; and that first bite is incredible. Like pure heaven, the best part of your day. It feels good, like the only part of good in the world, and it gives you an incentive to get up the next day." she slung an arm around his shoulders. He shook her off. "You are a mad woman, Stephanie Brown. A mad, mad woman."

He felt vaguely ashamed when he saw the crestfallen look on her face, and he reluctantly fell back in step with her and slipped his hand into hers. "So, will you go out for waffles with me?" he asked softly, and when she smiled, he realized what she meant about the only part of good in the world.

It wasn't waffles, for him. It wasn't even roast cat.

It was Stephanie.


End file.
